Charles Jean Jacques Joseph Ardant du Picq (19 October 1821 – 18 August 1870) was a French Army officer and military theorist of the mid-nineteenth century whose writings, as they were later interpreted by other theorists, had a great effect on French military theory and doctrine. Life and career Ardant du Picq was born at Périgueux in the Dordogne on 19 October 1821. On 1 October 1844, upon graduation from the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr, he was commissioned a sublieutenant in the 67th. As a captain, he saw action in the French expedition to Varna (April–June 1853) during the Crimean War, but he fell ill and was shipped home. Upon recovery, he rejoined his regiment in front of Sevastopol (September). Transferred to the 9th Chasseurs a Pied battalion December 1854, he was captured during the storming of the central bastion of Sevastopol in September 1855. He was released in December 1855 and returned to active duty. As a major with the 16th Chasseur Battalion, Ardant du Picq served in Syria from August 1860 to June 1861 during the French intervention to restore order during Maronite-Druze sectarian violence. Like virtually all his peers, he also saw extensive service in Algeria (1864–66), and in February 1869 was appointed colonel of the 10th Line Infantry Regiment. He was in France at the outbreak of war with Prussia on 15 July 1870 and took command of his regiment, the Tenth Regiment of the Line. He died on 18 August 1870 at the military hospital in Metz, from wounds received at the Battle of Mars-la-Tour. Battle Studies: du Picq as Military theorist Background Although comparatively little is known of his life, Ardant du Picq's small corpus of writings has earned him a place in the ranks of great military theorists. Before du Picq began his famous manuscripts, the French military relied heavily upon the writings of former Chief of Staff Baron Antoine-Henri Jomini when it came to warfare. Before his death, du Picq had already published Combat antique (ancient battle), which was later expanded from his manuscripts into the classic Etudes sur les combat: Combat antique et moderne, often referred to by its common English title as Battle Studies. This work was published in part in 1880 posthumously, and the complete text did not appear until 1902. The difficulties surrounding reform of the French military and its organization were widely discussed and his work